“Every business is a software business”, as Watts S. Humphrey, the father of quality in software and CMMI, said two decades ago. The CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, repeats the message: “all companies are software companies”.
I'm hoping your are aware that about two decades ago software devs took a TC hit that took at least a decade to recover from.
Every pre-dotcom bust software engineer I knew made substantially more pre-bust than post-post until just a few years ago.
In addition given the last N jobs I've had, while software is important in the world, most companies are vastly over indexed on software. A huge number of tech companies don't make more money than they spend, and we're so deep in a bubble people don't even care.
Plumbing is also hugely important, I don't know a single company that can run without running water, but it doesn't mean we can all be plumbers making 250k+.
Once the plumbing is in place and working, you've exhausted the value that can be delivered by it. The only need for additional plumbing after that point is when something serious breaks (e.g. pipe bursts), which might be a once in a decade event at a typical business.
The software engineer plays a part in optimizing accounting, payroll, communications, customer outreach / acquisition, sales, and some legal processes in virtually every business that exists - and those are just the most universal aspects.
"X and Y are both important and therefore people doing X and Y should earn roughly the same amount of money" is the most ridiculous oversimplification I've heard in at least a week.
While that statement broadly applies to white-collar and services, what percentage of COGS is software in manufacturing?
Is it 90%? 50%? or maybe only 5%?
Software is useful. That doesn't make it important enough to command high pay in a shrinking economy.
Edit: also, obviously, the buyer needs to be able to pay, which is sort of related to software being able to be used to advance a business’s competitiveness in the market such that the business is able and willing to invest in software development
Speaking about productivity, software is far from a guarantee of increased productivity - see the case of EHR in hospitals.
Was this conclusively measured? I imagine there are fewer errors or better decisions made due to quick and easy availability of health history.
I trust auditable, easily legible notes over chicken scratch handwriting faxed from office to office in previous years. With EHR, I can also catch healthcare providers writing notes about stuff that did not happen in the visit to cover their ass, although I imagine many doctors do this because a lot of the minutiae is a waste of time that just serves to help in case of lawsuits or billing disputes. But in any case, I would rather have access to that info than not in case in need to dispute it.
The broad economy is different from pure-software companies. Software can eventually only manage information - but many businesses eventually operate on physical things, where people matter much more than software.
The overwhelming majority of businesses have no use for software developers. Plenty of uses for software.
Here in Australia over 99% of businesses are SMEs, and the overwhelming majority of those core business is not software development.
I personally know exactly one web developer, so I know about forty car mechanics, three thousand builders, ninety seven plumbers, eighteen diesel mechanics, seventy three plasters, eight hundred fencers, twenty four tilers, sixty four concerters, ten thousand low voltage electricians, fifty five high voltage electricians, seven dentists, four thousand chefs and kitchen staff, eight thousand hospital fkorr staff, four hundred doctors, two glaziers... to one person who writes code.
I could be convinced that all companies are energy companies, though.
The whole payment system largely depends on software.
I think the point op is trying to make is without the investments in software to support business modeling, procuring supplies, scheduling staff, payroll, online marketing and all of the front of house functions like reservations, online menus and what have you, your steampunk restaurant is going to be outcompeted eventually.
This model assumes that everything can be reduced to an algorithm, a model.
Anyways, getting hungry, enough of this nonsense, I need to go microwave some math.
There's definitely more software used to aid–that's the A in CAD/CAM)–in manufacturing, but software isn't what we sell.